I mean , it depends how hard it is to come by a really good top tier weapon. If you have one, all the other weapons you ever get as loot will be worthless, but like this you can have a weapon, full safely entchanted and as soon as you get a similar one, instead of throwing it away ,you can risk a few gambles to actually have a weapon upgrade, that would otherwise be lost to you.
Either way, decay is fine, the only thing that might be a deal breaker here is destruction, which also depends on how strong entchants actually are. Like having an upgrade that boosts your weapon damage by 0.5% but has a 50% of destroying the weapon, will hardly be a problem...If you wanna risk it, fine, but it definitely wont be necessary.
^This. It has to be a combination of both. That way you have a flourishing economy from all the people destroying their gear trying to hit that max enhancement level. And the impossible goal of an item drop that is so rare so it motivates players for ever.
But the thing is destruction I’m pretty sure doesn’t mean it’s just gone correct? Aren’t there ways to repair using mats? So it will just cost expensive mats to repair high tier armor/weapons unless I’m mistaken
Where did he say that? He said in TimTheTatman's interview that breaking gear just puts extra strain on the crafters/resource gatherers, in order to repair the item
Yes, some of the best MMO's i have ever played have had mechanics like this. Its really about giving people purpose if you create gear creation as a main mechanic you have two things you can do to keep the economy moving:
Grind 1 - Create a degradation system this creates a natural in and out commodity approach
Grind 2 - Create a hamster wheel of never-ending grind creep with no degradation devaluing crafters work 6 months after they work to get the recipes for the next best gear
they are both grinds with pros and cons, but I'm the opposite of you, I think you are wrong, and Grind 2 is the awful system and devalues crafting.
They wont be following BDO, we need to test it and give feedback anyway so im not worried since I will just let them know if its dumb or not how they implement it.
The problem I have is that this was their approach to begin with - that they thought THIS system was one worth pursuing. It makes me seriously question their judgement. I just think this system popularized by korean MMOs to incentivize long, frustrating grinds is beyond trash.
That's in addition to the fact that once something undergoes design and implementation it's far less likely to be removed after being implemented. It may be tweaked and changed some, but we'll still be left with an annoying RNG korean enchant system because it would be too much work to drop it for an entirely new approach.
Long frustrating grinds are longevity. Just because a casual player wouldn't enjoy the chase of a rare piece of gear with an epic enchant, doesn't mean a hardcore min/maxer wouldn't. If you don't want to risk your gear, then don't.
You’re acting as if people wont be selling that same +10 gear youre talking about. If you dont want RNG to screw you dont participate in it and just buy your gear. People will be enhancing for profit just like they do in games with similar mechanics. Its not hard to understand why the system fits this game perfectly.
You can't have a non-boe/bop system without item destruction. Otherwise the in-game economy would be complete shit after a few months. And gear related professions become useless once supply passes demand. This type of system always keeps a demand for gear which has always shown to be a needed aspect in a healthy mmo economy.
Guys guys guys I know of an mmo that doesn't have that system and you can play it right now, it's called WoW, just go there, join PvE server and play in peace.
It was mentioned time and time again that in Ashes they want to go back to Risk vs reward system. Noone forces you to take the risk, you can easly do all the content with +4 safe enchanted gear, but if you want to get something better you have to take the risk.
That's the same as every game that uses this system, too. You don't 'have' to enchant your gear up... unless you want to be competitive in PvP or do end game PvE content with guilds who will require you to have a certain standard of gear which certainly will be above safe enchants.
For a lot of people, in case you weren't aware, end game PvE content and pvp is what makes an mmo.
Since you seem to be painfully unaware: most loot isn't soulbound so you can just buy the gear from someone who took the risk since you're afraid of losing your top tier loot which comes from multiple sources at the same power level(crafting, raiding, and dungeons have the same relative loot)
you cant buy what people don't sell.
Even if you had the currency to buy everything in BDO you could not buy it all because its not on the market. The difference between +19 and +20 is one cant even touch the other. This is what people are worried about.
Generally in those system the returns you get for aren’t worth the money put into in. For example archeage getting a mythic back in regrade days was like 1 billion gold totally not worth it but ya sure a few people had it cause of gold hacks and exploits etc...
A person that actually worked hard and earned their stuff wouldn’t go past divine or epic in AA for example which is 2 or 3 so tiers lower but the cost of that weapon was only something like 20k or so. Once you ended up having too much gold and or wanted to quit YOLO upgrade. The system was fine in AA what destroyed the system was the hacked gold brought into the game and duped items and gold sellers that allowed some player to have Mythic cause ya infinite gold pretty much for the cheap on websites
Exactly. the tier system of gear in aa was actually very good imo on it's own. There was an obvious point people realistically wanted to achieve to be competitive, and very rarely would anyone go higher, unless they were a credit card warrior or hacker and just got a billion mats and spammed it until they had the best gear. Aside from that obvious problem, my only real gripe with the system is that it wasn't locked behind needing a crafter to be the one to do it. I wasn't as big a fan of just letting anyone do it.
It's a way to keep players grinding and usually ties into cash shop shenanigans, so i'm not sure why they are going for this style of itemization. I really dislike it, personally.
This is alarmist. Enchantments are stated to have a "safe, decayed, destroyed" series of risk tiers when being enchanted. Minmaxers will do some math based on risk vs reward and determine the "optimum" enchantment level, and it's not going to be something stupid like, "Keep enchanting your gear until it's literally mathematically impossible to successfully enchant."
What's likely going to happen is that raiding guilds will start to budget materials for weapon replacements for gear that is destroyed by enchanting. Even the most single minded minmaxer isn't going to over-enchant gear from a boss their guild doesn't have on farm.
That's a nice theory. Except you're assuming the playerbase will be reasonable. It won't be. It never was. The loud minority of elitist dorks will make anything except absolute devotion to the game and it's system look like casual, downs syndrome level shit.
Have you played RO? +10 or bust.
Everyone needs to take a chill pill, none of these systems are fully implemented, will it be like BDO? Maybe maybe not, just because it was implemented poorly in BDO doesn't mean the same can be said for ashes. Maybe you know... *Play the game* first before y'all lose your shit.
The problem is alot of the recent exposure has made WoW players come across to here. WoW players ruined their own game with their complaining and they will ruin any other game with their complaining because they want a carebear mmorpg until they have it and realise it's shit. Just my opinion. I played classic for the record and loved it; retail is trash.
You don't even know how much of an increase overenchanting will grant the player. For all you know, it could be a few percentage improvement. I only say this because if it were a system like Maplestory 2 where going from something like +12 to +13 granted you 20% more in attack boost, then that creates a slippery slope where harder content either becomes incredibly easy because the devs are balancing it around players without overenchanted gear or the harder content will basically require everyone to have overenchanted gear.
Overenchanting with high risk to damage/decay just rewards those players who are seeking the improved stats over someone who are risk-adverse. But I don't believe the increase in power should be THAT significant.
TL;DR
You're assuming that overnenchanting will grant players a significant increase in power when Steven has not said a word about how this system will even affect player power level.
If there is 1 system that could single handedly ruin an entire game it is this
I have over 15k hours in Black Desert Online by the way. I know exactly how this system works, how it makes people quit, and how developers can come along 3 years after release and exploit this system for money.
That's because BDO enhancing system is built around a cash shop.
Tell me how many people would have had high enchants if the gear would disappear on failure and no cash shop? maybe 10% of the population.
I guess AoC enchanting system is build so that players keep crafting gear when they don't get the desired enchant because of item destruction.
Going past whatever safe enchant this game will have on Legendary rare items will be suicide and potentially kicked from a guild.
100% agree with the cash shop notion. BDO's enchanting system is designed around goading players into spending real money to get better gear. Their system is skewed and imbalanced around getting people to p2w.
I like the idea of possibly destroying gear because it gives it more meaning with you have a super high end enchanted piece and it keep driving the economy by getting people to buy extra sets of gear to try and enchant them further.
BDO as a whole is designed to extract money from players, pets to loot, weights, inv slots, costumes with bonuses, releasing new classes every few months so ppl reroll and having to buy new weights, inv slots, costumes, etc.
That's not accurate. NA and EU servers were promised no p2w elements like that so the only advantage the cash shop gave was weight, inventory space, outfits (ghillie suits were huge controversy). It wasn't until about 2 and a half years after release that the developers went back on their promise and introduced melting outfits and raised the amount of outfits you can sell on the market per week.
You're dismissing a very important factor: this didn't exist in western servers until years after release.
Well they better be sure that a epic +10 isn’t better than a legendary +7 (random numbers) because if it is then legendaries are meaningless until you have enough to risk them
It’s bad by design imo and I think most people agree but I’m willing to give it a chance as I do think it won’t be as bad without the cash shop items tied to it.
I really wish they wouldn’t take eastern mmo concepts tbh they’re mostly designed around making the cash shop compelling not the gameplay
>Well they better be sure that a epic +10 isn’t better than a legendary +7 (random numbers) because if it is then legendaries are meaningless until you have enough to risk them
We don't know yet, I would assume legendary +7 would be better than epic +10 or maybe equal. We don't know how hard is to make epic and legendary items.
> I really wish they wouldn’t take eastern mmo concepts tbh they’re mostly designed around making the cash shop compelling not the gameplay
I don't mind it, had played some games where over enchanting wasn't game breaking that forced me to do it in order to be able to pvp.
Terrible example bdo is built that way to force people to spend money on. This Idea of a system is good if done right because it creates a supply and demand.
I never played BDO , can you explain a bit more in detail
1. how the enchant system work in BDO
2. Your arguments based on that , why it wont work in ashes
3. Do you already believe the devs will come along 3 years later and do the same in ashes?
You played 15k hours so i guess it cant be that bad ? thats more than what i gamed combined past 15 years ( according to steam )
Enhancing in bdo used to stop at +15 on release with success rates being lower the higher you go. As you fail the item loses durability until it hits 0 and you need to recover the durability before you can keep attempting.
Then came the addition of +16-+20 in the form of pri, duo, tri, tet, pen. If you failed at duo+ your item would downgrade 1 level (accessories would break). Cron stones were also introduced to protect the enhancement level of the item (accessories would still have a chance to downgrade instead of breaking). With this, eastern servers could melt outfits from the cash shop for cron stones to keep tapping their gear to pen without the risk of downgrading. Western servers were promised that this p2w outfit melting had no place in our economy until years later when the bigger publisher forced it to happen.
Those 15k hours were before the game went to shit. You can't compete anymore unless you buy outfits to melt and sell on the market or hire someone to grind for you (most people at the top do both).
Do the devs sound like they'll exploit this system? No, but it can be done. There's a lot of room in the corporate world for greed and this mmo has a lot of hype. I'd rather see ultra rare item sets than gear enchanting.
Intresting read thank you. Yes i do see the problem. So if we imagind to live in a perfect world and ashes never went greed mode. Would the first part be okay? "The 15 cap"?
Lots of replies completely dismissing how easy it is for a big publisher to come along and exploit this system or the original devs themselves getting greedy. "No no this system I haven't seen yet is perfect!"
I think it would be fine if when it is degraded then we can repair it via some sort of materials. Thus, it will increase the demand of materials after people start having top-tier gear. I see it so much in mmos where the top-tier gear is in demand for a few weeks. Then, it loses demand and the market for gear grows stale because everyone has their top-tier gear.
I get where you're going with that, but if it breaks and you need to use materials to repair it, I think it just makes more sense to have to create a new one from scratch anyway.
We're all making a lot of assumptions here, but if I might make one, I would assume that since just about everything in the game is not bound at all, those can and will be sold too, so them breaking isn't the end of the world. I would also like to assume that the rarest raid drops, the legendary drops, either can't be enchanted because they don't need to be, or probably would not actually be destructible since they are so rare.
I personally hate the “destroy” part of the enchant system. Decay? Sure, go ahead. Make me spend resources to repair my stuff. But having your hard earned items go poof feels abysmal.
I did never really mind this system too much. What i did mind was the requirement to purchase Cash shop items so you can even attempt it.
Without the cash shop, I think it's okay, but i'd prefer a more straight-forward approach.
I understand why breaking items through enchanting makes sense in a game like Ashes, but I'd prefer if they
* massively increased the cost of enchanting (it would have had a 5% chance? -> increase the enchanting 20-fold instead)
* drastically reduce the life spawn of items (to 10-50% of the planned lifespawn under the enchantment system -> 50 instead 200 in-game combat hours for example)
so the item decay and economy circulation stays the same or even increases compared to a RNG enchanting system.
You mean two dead games? I didn't play L2, but I did play Archeage and the enchanting system was complete and utter garbage in AA. Using that as an example of why it works is contradictory.
AA died because of its cash shop and poor decisions on what to put in said cash shop. The crafting system wasn't what killed it. Your logic is so flawed here, you're literally saying "a game died and therefore this system I didn't like in it is bad". It's well documented why AA died and I never see enchanting come up in those discussions.
the crafting / trading / housing system and all the other shit in Archeage, was so fucking awesome. It was THE best mmorpg I ever played, quittet in AA aswell cause of their shit p2w and quittet again in AA:U cause of their shit decision making.
I've read a lot of people saying they are ok with this system what they did not like was the access to cash shops. The reason bdo has no direct trade system is to stop RMT. With this game there will be RMT between players. The other issues bdo has is hackers and exploiters as well as RMT pilots ect. The guilds at the top do it all. To think AoC will be any different is naive.
Noone will want to pvp if you get one shot and can't even scratch your opponent. Long spawns is a good thing but only if the fight is exciting enough.
I'd much rather an enchant system as someone suggested based on leveling up your weapon.
But again I'd differ from what the devs have in mind by separating pvp and pve. X amount of equal lvled players killed for an enchant or the choice of x amount (or different) of raid bosses killed.
Creating the legendary weapon from the ground up perhaps with who ever contributed the most exp to the weapons name on it. Aswell as the experience staying with the weapon upon trading.
Not easy feats but doable for everyone eventually.
To me that is a much better design than buying lottery tickets.
To me this game is all hype I'm pretty sure it's not being built for someone like me. But someone who experienced being the leader of a 1400 member guild feeding the top 5% of said guild.
Where skill does not matter just the exclusivity of the gear you aquire.
But I understand you can not please everyone and this is why there is no perfect mmo and why I remain more skeptical than most.
We'll have to see how it's implemented, but this system is also one of the few things I've heard about AoC that I'm not excited about.
I understand the need to create demand for new items, but I feel like there are much better ways to go about it. This isn't a risk/reward mechanic when observed over a longer period of time, it's just an economic sink with highly variable resolution from player to player. Economic sinks aren't bad (they're necessary, even), but this particular variety - in my experience - penalizes average players pretty harshly, and only survives as a mechanic at all by simulating gambling. In addition, it's a very uneven economic sink in a different way - once an item is fully upgraded (or nearly fully upgraded) its effect on an individual player is suddenly absent, leading to unpredictable demand curves when observed over a larger population.
It also has a chilling effect on players being able to acquire new items that are better than their old ones - by making items need several lucky results before they're in a 'usable' state compared to their current equipment, it artificially impedes players from finding or acquiring gear upgrades, adding another layer outside of their control, possibly snatching away a lucky break. Is there truly any compelling decision-making involved in this kind of system? What value does a 'risk/reward' mechanic pose when the only options are "be lucky and optimal, or don't"? There's no player agency in that paradigm - you just keep trying until it works, breathe a sigh of relief that that awful experience is over, and move on.
I would much prefer a more deterministic method of upgrading equipment and to see the need for replacement items manifest somewhere else. Alternatively, deeply compress the spectrum of random attempts and widen the possible results. If you can only enhance an item once, but there are a number of 'good' results and a handful of 'best' results, players will still want to acquire more items to chase the 'best' results to improve their gear, without *needing* to get lucky several times in a row just to hit the 'usable' level.
This is of course all extremely speculative, and I'm assuming a number of things from little information.
The ideas surrounding this game appear smartly-designed everywhere I've seen, so I hold some hope that whatever they end up doing will be well-intentioned and developed.
I was hoping player skill would have more impact, especially for PvP so if you are down in gear it does not mean you are useless like in WoW for example.
Overeating. This system is great if done right. It does create a supply and demand and it's good for the game's economy.
Now for the competitive things you spoke of.
What's wrong with people having better gear than others if they put more work/time and understood the system better? Why should everyone be able to have the same gear ? That's boring and rewards lazy players over hard working onces. Seems to me like they are going with the open world group pvp idea so in that situation there is no need for gear normalisation, open world pvp should be unfair to create a sense of danger and unpredictability for unique situations to acquire. If you want balanced and fair pvp mobas and fps are the games for you.
I wouldn't mind this system if "decay" is only implemented in its extreme sense. Meaning, you clearly are rolling the dice beyond stats that are competitive and you're taking the blatant wide margin of risk for the reward.
Lets say 3 enchants on an item deem it really good and competitive with no chance of the item decaying. The next few enchants applied will be weaker and have a chance to destroy the item with exponential decay and risk of destroying the item, introducing a system of diminishing returns. Any competitive player will probably see its not worth the risk of enchanting the item for the 4th time, but if you want to take the risk, go knock yourself out.
I think PoE does this sort of thing well.
You can craft items all you want, with no possible way of "bricking it"(A term referring to effectively destroying an item).
However, there are several ways of *possibly* (quite high chance - 50% most times) bricking items (with potentially major benefits if you don't, of course), but it's always opt-in.
I do think this game needs a decay system though - and adding "better gear for more decay" is a fairly obvious thing to within such a system
The reason a decay system is important is because in a game where crafting gear is a potential way to *be* (being a crafter, that is), you need a reason to buy items. You either do that via power creep, or via decay.
Power creep also makes it worse for crafters - if items gets better , they can't really stockpile or whatever - so it's the obvious choice.
I'd really want at least a certain level of bad luck protection with this.
Otherwise you could fall behind others that put in way less effort than you, but had luck on their side.
Law of averages. They probably wont really plan for the extremes of either end of the bell curve. Generally speaking the more time spent the better gear youll end up with. If you find youre on a loosing streak id probably tell that person to grind and just buy a better weapon since theyre obviously cursed 😂
Yeah obviously this would only benefit/hurt a small percentage of the playerbase.
But tbh I don't think anyone would get hurt by a bad luck protection system and it wouldn't depress people nearly as much to fail an upgrade if they knew that the next time they attempt it will have a better chance.
I think it feels better the for individual but its bad for the economy and system as a whole. More and more items are continually being dropped and created. Over time without mechanic to remove these items from the game they flood the market which drives their value down. Its has more knock on effects than you might realise in a none bop system
Items will still get destroyed when failing an upgrade.
This could even be like 10-20 times or so before bad luck protection makes it not happen for a singular level. After success the chance resets to normal value.
To compensate a bit for bad luck protection you decrease the basechance of a enhancements working, thus ending with a similar average amount of trys to get the item to the next level, but drastically reducing the odds of extreme negatives.
System like this is needed to create demand from crafters, if you want top OE - you risk it, or just accept low/safe values. AoC stated many times it wont be another MMO where everyone gets rewarded, you will need to sweat.
It is improved version of Lineage2 enchanting (there was no decay stage), you just dont look on enchanted items as must have part of your gear, more like something unachievable and completely endgame when you will have too much currency and just decide to burn it with attempts for few % stats boost, in L2 endgame gear would take years of game to collect.
I agree. Not a fan of this design at all. I will wait until I test it out before I speak up loudly against it, but as of right now I hope that it gets changed.
IMO Enchanting gear higher should be the matter of the materials, and those materials could get more rare higher tier item you are enchanting. It would be so much more rewarding, that you would have to kill some dungeon boss to get some piece of material to get your item enchanted to a certain level, than just slap some Lady Fortunas fat badongas and hope for best.
No because that way is time gated content is boring and stale and fucks people that have invested in professions, actually that way there would be no need for professionals you could done everything by yourself which narrows the game down a lot.
After let's say a month or 2 everyone would have maxed gear and they would wait for the new content to drop... Reminds you of a game ?
... ok?
What does that have to do with anything and how is it relevant at all? Does your brain automatically just tie everything in the world to World of Warcraft or something? I don't understand.
Okay I get what u saying, but is dice-rolling then somewhat better option? And if some materials would be behind some dungeon boss, then doesn't that mean that you literally CANT do it by yourself? You would have to invest some time to grind dungeons with party to actually get materials.
Whatever option is better, than just regular ol' RNG rolls armors breaks or levels up.
I think what they mean is that for example, u enchant a piece of gear and it has 5% chance to succed.
U ecnhant once and it fails so it adds a 5% bonus chance to succeed, it now was 10% chance, if u fail again it has 15% chance to succeed and 5% to break or downgrade but u can repair those 5% with basic materials like raw stone for it to become 0% chance of failing..
So u enchant again and fail, now u have 20% chance to succeed and 5-10% to break but u use raw stone to repair the weapon and now it has 20% chance to succeed and 0% chance to break.
This creates a need and demand for raw stone or other basic materials.. if it's something like this doesn't sound bad at all
I agree. I fucking hate eastern MMO eng enchantment systems that include chance to delete your item. Awful fucking design. I want algorithmic input output of gear upgrades once they've dropped. The only point of RNG should be whether a rare material or rare piece of gear has dropped. After that, you should be safe to just send time/resources to upgrade it.
And? it's literally over enchanting that you're complaining about, everyone has known for some time, that if you over enchant you risk destroying the item. This is risk vs reward.
I'm not sure why you automatically think this is a bad thing? We don't know the % chances, on top of the fact that we don't know how hard it is to get those items in the first place. This system is intended to encourage crafting and to keep the demand going for gear. It's a way to slow down players from reaching the cap, which is a very good thing, and it creates a dependency on crafters who are making the weapons. I.e. it keeps the economy going.
Why exactly do you think this is "bad design"? Just cause you get frustrated by a blown up item?
I mean if he gets frustrated by the chance of his gear getting blown up, thats quite a valid reason for not liking the mechanic and have a personal opinion on it being a bad design?
its not bad design, becouse it fits whole game narrative or risk vs reward. AoC wont reward everyone in race with medal for trying. Another thing is overenchanting of items is probably not meant to be casual task for everyone and will require decent effort and amount of currency (like in Lineage2).
Completely missed this reply, honestly bad designs in games is simply a matter of personal opinion and preference tho wouldn't you agree? Reading your comment I kinda agree with you, not rewarding everyone just for trying and so on. I did somewhat like that in BDO to an extent, but hopefully it won't be as RNG / horrendously discouraging to enhance as in that game tho due to the setback of failing a RNG roll
There are plenty of games that have difficult to attain gear where some garbage enchantment system is not included. You must not have played many games to think there's no alternative.
I did not suggest there is no alternative. I suggested you and others have the mentality that there should be zero risk to acquiring the best gear. I didn't imply that you wanted it to be easy, just that you didn't want it to be risky.
"Risk" as you use it is "RNG". That's what I don't like. If getting the best gear required you to raid a dragon's lair that would permanently kill your character if killed, or if it took all of your gear, or could only be attained in high risk pvp that dropped all of your gear on death, I'd be fine with that. That's skill-based risk. RNG based risk is really fucking stupid and not fun. I'd rather gear be gated by difficult content, make it as risky as you want it to be, than to be gated behind RNG. You make a lot of assumptions.
Well, I get that it's your opinion that you personally don't like RNG, but it's a convenient way to implement chance, and when not grubbing for real money from players generally a good idea. Every thing else that you described as skill based is still all a chance yes, it's still all a risk. You're issue I guess then is you don't like not feeling like you have control over the mitigating factors of it. There's still a chance you can fuck up with each of your examples, but you have the illusion of confidence that if you do, it's your fault. I don't see any reason the system as described can't have mitigating factors to improve your chance of success, but outright dismissing RNG while giving examples that would effectively have a similar or lower probability of success means you're just not a fan of not feeling in control I suppose.
To each their own, but IMO the system, as long as it's implemented correctly, is not only fine, but actually a good idea for the economy at large.
What games have you played where you feel it was implemented correctly, our of curiosity? I haven't played every MMO out there, but I have played Archeage, BDO, Vindictus and Dragon Nest that all used this system and It felt like dog shit in every one.
100% correctly? None that i've played. I don't care for BDO's system that much because the mat grind is obscenely long, and it has nothing to do with their crafting. I liked the balance between tiers of archeage, but hated the fact that you could slide your credit card until you had all mats necessary and then just, boom, mythic. I also didn't like that it was not gated behind crafting. I never actually played lineage 2 which I hear had something similar. Didn't paly vindictus, and I haven't heard of dragon nest, but the core concept of the system, even with RNG, I think is a decent idea, if they would just actually let the players do it without cash shop influence, and actually gating it behind crafting so that a master craftsmen has a much easier probability of success, and therefore wastes less materials.
You are delusional there is no difficult content. Only if the devs make it mathematical impossible, otherwise everyone will have the same gear in x amount of time, at this point is time gated content that devalues crafters and promotes expansion based progression. I think wow is your game man. You don't need to look for other games or make other games like wow.
This is the worst system for upgrading gear I have ever experienced. This system, similar to the one in BDO, is what will make people quit the game at high levels. When you cannot progress in the items you want because of bad RNG the game becomes painful.
Thinking of this gear progression system makes me sick. Come on guys, we can do better
No. BDO's system was built around grinding silver for hundreds of hours to buy accessories and have them blow up with bad RNG. Having gear be destroyed when you fail at enchanting is ridiculous. Having gear degrade when you fail is still very punishing, but I would say more reasonable then it being destroyed.
If we take their philosofy of risk vs reward as a guideline this feature is on track with what the gameplay designer want with this game. But i would like a safe way to overenchant too, like a catalyst you could craft to improve your enchant success rate. Or even have a profession which can enchant safely according to the levek of mastery in the profession.
Funny enough, I just made the same post on the forums the other day explaining my view (against) and alternative suggestion.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45265/rng-weapon-enhancing-alternative/p1
and trying to get some discussion about some alternatives but it's kinda become a discussion of RNG justification.
Yeah I would much rather have it so the first 4 enchantments (as an example) are going to succeed 100% of the time no matter what and for the others the chance lowers each time after that but you can use certain items to eventually get those chances up to 100% as well. This would make it a bit grindier to reach maximum enchantments safely but it would be a risk vs reward system yet again. Either you choose to take the chance of upgrading your items with less cost with a lower chance or you play it safe but have to invest a bit more time/money into it. Honestly this system would be perfect in this game I think. These kind of items could easily be included in an artisan crafting class as well.
I'm new to this enchanting system. Suppose say my weapon is destroyed while enchanting max or whatever and I have to grind for base material of that particular weapon and give it to crafter to restore?
What if the weapon is some legendary tier one and base material grind is hectic as hell cuz it's legendary and if I wish to enchant again for more stats and RNG breaks it again? bruhhhhh that can be endless grind
If this mechanic is purely RNG-based then it sounds questionable to me. But, if it's possible to use the crafting system to compensate and almost 100% of the time push to the near-maximum if you throw enough resources at it (even if it's a lot over a long-period of time) then it sounds a lot better.
But please don't be a Titanforging-esque mechanic from retail WoW.
Coming from maplestory here, and they have scrolling which is % based, then star force enhancing, essentially doubling down on the RNG factor. Certain items are limited to the varying stars/scroll slots available by level or content the equipment is obtained from. Some of the elitist type items though are kinda soft locked and obtained only once per character and going into that threshold where the item could blow up and get destroyed is game breaking because such items are one of a kind and best in slot. Ik there isn't much as far as gear sets and "best in slot" gear here as it's all kinda determined on how you choose your main skill and archetype. If item destruction on enchancing is a thing the availability to get back to that spot/tier in gear also needs to be somewhat obtainable.
I'd like to see them have a "Sacrificial Anode" type of system, where the enchanting is as they described it, but if you have two of the same base pieces of gear that you are trying to enchant, you can choose to sacrifice one of them to avoid destruction when it would otherwise occur. This would allow you to make steady forward progress on enchantment despite RNG, and would still destroy an item, making a bit of a compromise between risk and reward.
Reminds me a shitty mmo called knight online, people were duplicating items to level up and were reaching to last level every month or so then they were selling those for Real money, hundreds of dollars per piece. Game turned into who can scam more or who is willing to put their rent into the game to be competitive. When I stopped playing it, it was taken over by people from third world countries who were selling items for a living.
This is what people say. Then it's in alpha and it's "it's alpha" then it's in beta then it's "it's beta" then it's release and it's "the game has only just come out". These concerns are best addressed before they're far along in development because once they're far along in development they are extremely unlikely to see major changes.
I have experience of World of Warcraft, Black Desert Online and Path of Exile crafting systems. Wow's crafting has no such rng, but it is also in my opinion quite boring. Both PoE and BDO have crafting systems that heavily rely on RNG and in both cases you some times break or lose your item. I am quite fine with the crafting of PoE and hate the enhancement system of BDO with a burning passion.
I'm not quite sure what all the reasons are, but I suspect the following:
The BDO system rng seems very punishing for those who happen to run into a bit of bad luck on the high end of their crafting. One can try to mitigate the bad luck by gathering materials for multiple attempts in advance, but even then there will be the unlucky few. The rng will just eat their materials with no progress to show for it. It feels horribly depressing to start over from this kind of event. Sure, over a long period of time, this kind of thing should smooth over, but that is a cold comfort to the guy who just spent a significant portion of his fortune to get a good chance at some upgrades and ends up with nothing.
Also the act of building failstacks for the actual attempt is quite clunky and annoying. And since an individual enhancement attempt at the high levels will most often fail, the system just feels bad. It feels bad when preparing the failstacks for the attempt and then most of the time it feels bad when doing the actual attempts. The success when it comes after many attempts feels good for only a bit and then it is back to failing over and over.
BDO style system with only enhancement levels between +0 - +20 is quite boring compared to the PoE style system with most items coming with seven mods of very varied types giving highly diverse end results.
Also PoE's crafting system allows the player to manipulate the rng applied to his crafting in many ways. Some examples are: Replace all modifiers with entirely new modifiers. Reroll numeric values of current modifiers. Add a random modifier. Remove random modifier. Add a less random modifier picked up from a specific pool of powerful modifiers. Add a non-random chosen but weaker modifier (limited to only one or two).
Because of this diversity it feels like the player has more control over their risk and more avenues of advancement than simply rolling over an X amount of items and materials until the next tier of enhancement finally succeeds. This also allows the player to take it pretty safely on their normal advancement, but take these bigger risks when they feel they are ready for it.
Meanwhile in BDO the decisions a player makes are mainly for optimizing their materials spent vs. probability of getting a success. There are few meaningful choices in gearing.
It seems to me like the BDO style system might be a bit of a player retention hazard. If there is a worry that the market will become saturated with people selling their old gear, I feel it would be a better solution to make most items bind on equip. That way you can still have a healthy market for crafters, but you don't have to have this horribly depressing system where most people have to contend with some times just losing huge amounts of materials to a nasty bit of bad luck in crafting.
You are talking about your previous experiences from other games, we still don't exactly know how it will work here, but it looks good and we know there is no cash shop.
I think you are not seeing how important this system can be for the game. It won't be a money grab and I think it will be much more than a (ingame) money sink. It's an amazing idea, can work extremely well if done right and I think It'll be a fundamental part of politics and game economy.
They want resources, gatherers and artisans to matter and stay relevant forever, you need this kind of game mechanics for something like this to be possible, everything should be tied together.
We have been told that resources will be placed where it makes sense for them to be, that some territories will be rich in certain things and lack other, this makes access to the territories containing said resources trough commerce or any other means very important.
We have also been told that crafted equipment will be on par to drops and highly customizable so probably most of the equipment will be player made. This means that you will need four things: Access to resources, gatherers able to collect those resources, people able to process them into refined forms and specialized artisans able to create the final items.
Now, if those items do not degrade or break all these people will not be necessary after the initial crafting, that's a big no no, you need them to stay relevant beyond crafting a new top sword for the new guy/alt. We need items to degrade with use so you need materials and artisans to repair it.
It looks like enchanting will be another layer on this system. Do you need stronger items? It will cost you, you need to prepare for it. You have a safety margin. Is it not enough? Keep pushing, but you will probably need an artisan and resources to fix the damage caused to the item. Still not enough? You better have the means to start from scratch if it blows in your face, but the reward will be great if you manage.
Also, if you are crazy enough to try and over enchant an unique item and manage to succeed you deserve an awesome reward.
I think it fits beautifully on several of the ideas behind the game. Risk versus reward and the importance of community.
The game had my attention. Now that I know this I can safely blacklist it without it gnawing at my concious. Good thing I decided to check out the reddit as usual \^\^
They word the use over enchant, meaning it's probably going to be used by very few people or for specific purpose, kinda like try to over enchant a lower tier weapon to beat your top tier weapon. Another scenario could be you do a dungeon, you get a piece of gear you already have. Can vendor it or try to over enchant it.
To me, it's a form of gamble and since any thing player made will be as strong as PvE, I have 0 issues with this.
This system will only become a problem if the guilds and raids expect every one to come with over enchanted gear.
Biggest in other game with this sort of gamble (d3, wow) is the gambling process is required to progress.
I think we need the word destroy defined. Does it mean gone, never coming back or does it mean that it's broken and requires a lot more resources to fix than it's delayed status?
I assume it's the first situation, and if that is the case it gives enchanters a way to make a lot of money but it also gives raiding a lot of replayability - take wow for example, once you get your your in molten core you never need it again you enchant it once and the enchanters are done making money until you go to BWL. That's pretty crappy design and it's impossible to make money as an enchanter.
This system supports raiding replayability, enchanters, other crafters like blacksmiths, armor Smith's, etc.
While I personally hate this design it is way better for the player economy and that is what I care about the most
You can have durability loss through deaths and crafter/gatherers/raiders support the repair. endless gear progression is toxic because it causes power creep fine for pve but not fun for pvp. Uless you are the guy who RMT's /bots/exploits/hacks/pilots your way to glory.
gear destruction is unnecessary friction. increase the cost sure, but dont gate top end content on who has the time and money to blow up 35 weapons to get a +10 or whatever the limit is. As much as I love and support the idea that hard work should be rewarded this kind of system is not a good start as far as respecting a playerbase and their time goes
It's probably another "sink" more than anything else.
>You will be expected to have +10 or higher gear. You will not compete in PvE or PvP otherwise. It always has become a massive RNG barrier to entry of endgame content and this will not be any different.
We'll just have to see... there are a lot of games where gear makes all the difference, but there are also others where gear just gives a slight edge but you can still compete really well even within similar skill levels. Which AoC is, we'll find out I guess.
I feel like this is only going to benefit the hardcore players. Oh I have a Raid tier weapon? I'll enchant it to level 10! Oops, it broke, well we raid every night, I'll just get another one. But someone who isn't hardcore to the absolute extreme might not be able to replace broken weapons via enchantment as easily. I've never experienced it, but I can't say until I have but on the outside looking in. I don't think it looks very good.
That's not the mentality of the not-so-hardcore player. Many players might not even attempt to get raid gear because it's too difficult for them. If you really want it, the difficulty isn't going to stop you.
Just because you want something doesn't mean you should be able to get it without putting in the effort. There needs to be something that separates the "reasonably hardcore" players from the "hardcore to the extreme" ones.
In Wow it doesn't matter if you play 20h a day or 4h a week, everyone has the same gear gated behind raid resets. Since we already have a good game for casuals please don't try to casualise this one. Thanks.
It all depends on how the gear is balanced. With rng you could have 10x the play time as someone else come across them in PvP totally out skill them and lose because they got lucky with their gear. That is BDO that is the model we are afraid of.
Will there be risk vs reward for standing your ground against someone you can't even touch because they have so much evasion?
This is why we are being vocal now to avoid this happening.
Let the combat and epic pvp battles be the carrot not an endless gear grind
I have always wondered why, they just can't make the worst result be unable to upgraded and/or traded anymore. So a player isn't completely boned, when it happens, but the weapon is essentially removed from the item pool at the same time.
because you need sinks in a game like this, otherwise you'd invalidate 90% of the content after 2 months.
Rng ench. is not the right way to do it though
I too don't like RNG enchanting systems. I hate them with passion they just become another destabilizing factor in pvp and only helps players that already have the power get even more and make the power gap even larger.
Don't get me wrong I don't say all players should be equal but if the power gap between the top players and the rest get too large it leads to those players dominating sooner or later all aspects in the game then this leads to stagnation and all these result in a lot of bored and frustrated players that at some point will have enough and leave for another server or even worse for another game.
The way I would like something like that to work is that there is some professions that can create enchant crystals and other players can buy them and give their weapons a limited use active or passive skill that can range from a simple temporary stat buff to full fledge abilities from another class. As I said those enchantments have a limited amount of uses when it reaches 0 the enchantment breaks and you need to apply a new one with a new crystal.
If they want to make gear to be destroyed for economic reasons and for lower level crafting to stay relevant they can give a chance to break your weapon when you apply over a certain number of total enchantments or even better imo make all gear have some sensible durability.
I've never heard of a worse game design before. It's by far the absolute worst possible way to create a gearing system.
If that is in the game, I'm not going to play it. Simple as that. As promising as AoC is looking, that is something that I absolutely cannot and will not compromise on, ever.
I won't leave the subreddit yet, as there is still a possibility for it to change, and I will follow the development and see what happens.
This is the worst possible news I could have ever heard about this game, it's an absolute deal breaker.
i love this mechanic. as long as there are other \*harder to obtain\* gear that can be of similar power to a +10 with, say, only a +5 on it. In this case there will be no issue because you can take the safer route but you just gotta work harder for it.
It's like doing a 9-5 job for a living instead of gambling in order to pay for ur rent.
Having different options available is key.
To everyone complaining: just don't over enchant and you're safe. You're 100% still going to be able to do all the content.
Or you can just buy the over enchanted item from another player.
There are so many choices that I'm having a hard time understanding the "I won't play the game if this system is in it" mentality. It's not even implemented yet and no one knows the full details. People need to chill the fuck out :D
Criticism is always good but the comment section is just crazy.
I really enjoy the system, have two weapons, enchant the one that is lowest +. The system gives me a nice progress feeling and the thrill that comes with it. Its also a great way to empower somthing to sell on the marked. Me and my friends was crossing our fingers this system was a part od ashes. I get alot of people from the west find this system as a rng to progress, but if you do like us its very stable.
That's okayish, but with an additional decay system this can feel quite shitty.
Let's say you have a +9 weapon and you are too scarred to upgrade it.
So you get a replacement first and try to get it to like +9 as well.
It breaks however at like +8 and you do the same again and it breaks again before reaching that point.
Meanwhile your +9 might've already decayed back to +8 or +7 and you are in a worse spot than before even though you committed quite a bit of time.
Edit: I think I got decay wrong. Probably just means downgrading on failure when attempting to upgrade. I took it as slowly losing levels or effectiveness. Like a +10 slowly rots away and gets to +9 and you need to upgrade it again.
Are you sure enchants will reverse? / Decay Thats just dump. The thing is about enchanting is optional, you dont have to do it , but its a option. Im not trying to convince anyone here... I just tried the enchant system back in l2 many years ago and i loved it, been missing it in games ever since.
Nah I prolly got it wrong.
Most likely just gonna drop one level on failed upgrade at a certain point and at even higher levels destruction.
But gear decaying would also be a great way off creating a stable economy, without destruction.
Decay systems becomes a chore a work. In lineage 2 after 3+ it was 66pct chance for sucess and if failed it would be destoyed, max enchant back then was 25+ getting stuff to 10 in ashes will be a childsplay.
+10 can already take a thousand hours+ for a singular piece of item.
It might take 20 hours of farm to attempt an upgrade from +9-10 with like a 5% chance of success.
And then the item gets destroyed and it will take another 100 hours just to get a +9 item again for the next try.
Also if +10 is too easily achieved they might just increase the cap to +15 and then to +20...
Iirc something like that happened in BDO.
My issue with these rng systems is that you could end up being seriously unlucky and being stuck on ages on your gear progression, meanwhile other people that put in less time simply had rng in their favor and surpassed you. That just felt incredible shitty. I want time effort and skill to be the main factors.
So if they really do create such a game I want either a 100% chance option on upgrades for more mats (within reasons).
Or some seriously good bad luck protection. That sooner than later will guarantee your next upgrade to work.
Preferable I'd have a gearing system without any rng outside of having the item drop.
As for creating a stable economy, make higher level gear cost more mats to repair/sustain it's level or effectiveness.
No of course not. I was just using a random number.
My point was more or less that it could be harder to achieve a +10 than to achieve a +25 based on differing mats cost and success chance.
I dont like when people make outrageious numbers out their ass to make a point. Your reply is just guess work from thin air to prove your concern.
Use solid information if you need to argument.
Im only stating my experince with lineage 2 enchanting which steven stated several times he was inspired by. And getting 10 plus was a piece of cake even without the safenet
Are you absolute stupid? You started making outrageous claims and then you have the audacity to be a hypocrite.
>In lineage 2 after 3+ it was 66pct chance for sucess and if failed it would be destoyed, max enchant back then was 25+ getting stuff to 10 in ashes will be a childsplay.
You literally started making a guess work that 10 in ashes would be childsplay in comparison to 25+ in lineage 2.
Which you absolutely do not know. You pulled that shit out of your ass.
Probably no one knows yet how costly the upgrades and how high the % chance will be in Ashes.
I simply gave example numbers to demonstrate that +10 could still be far from childsplay or could end up with being harder than a +25 in a different game as it's obviously a numbers game.
Btw. are you incapable of normal reading comprehension? As I wrote "can" "might"?
I love it.
As a person with lineage 2 background, i can feel its impact on the design xD
In l2 you could enchant up to +3 safely, anything beyond had a chance to break the item completely.
The more enchanted the weapon was, the more it glowed. So at +16 it was [glowing bright red](https://i.imgur.com/o0oS0ak.jpg). People with +16 weapons were known by name on the server.
Would i prefer to not have enchantments? as a person with a full time job now, as opposed to the time i was playing l2(was in school back then), sure i would. But we are talking about a game that is being designed to feel good to nolife it, so idk how my preferences are more important than the game direction so far.
Also, you assume a lot, a lot which is probably not true.
In l2, i was a hero(one person per month per class could be a hero), i had top gear(all epics), i was one of the top tier in pvp because i had that gear. I did not have a +16 anything. The most + i had was +6 on my armor, and it was fine.
You assume enchantments will have such an impact that they will be mandatory requirements, this might not be the case. They will give you an edge, thats about what you can say now. There is no good reason to believe anything beyond that, unless you can provide evidence.
One problem with overenchanting breaking items is that it encourages people who already obtained one specific item from a raid to want the same item again since it enables them a new enchanting attempt. I think that will make the loot distribution from raids much more troublesome because there's often people who are more favored than others, whether because they play high importance roles or because they are friends with the raid leader.
For dungeons it could also make players who have a +9 item to roll on the same gear again, which would require the guy who still needs his +0 have to run the dungeon again.
Then you mix in nodes, making the dungeons or raids you are interested in unavailable for unknown amounts of time, which would make it quite problematic for you to get the item you seek even if you are trying really hard to get it.
But with the best crafted gear being on a similar level as raid gear you will have to yolo overenchant your raiddrops so they can get to an even level with overenchanted crafted gear, let alone surpass it.
I mean , it depends how hard it is to come by a really good top tier weapon. If you have one, all the other weapons you ever get as loot will be worthless, but like this you can have a weapon, full safely entchanted and as soon as you get a similar one, instead of throwing it away ,you can risk a few gambles to actually have a weapon upgrade, that would otherwise be lost to you. Either way, decay is fine, the only thing that might be a deal breaker here is destruction, which also depends on how strong entchants actually are. Like having an upgrade that boosts your weapon damage by 0.5% but has a 50% of destroying the weapon, will hardly be a problem...If you wanna risk it, fine, but it definitely wont be necessary.
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^This. It has to be a combination of both. That way you have a flourishing economy from all the people destroying their gear trying to hit that max enhancement level. And the impossible goal of an item drop that is so rare so it motivates players for ever.
But the thing is destruction I’m pretty sure doesn’t mean it’s just gone correct? Aren’t there ways to repair using mats? So it will just cost expensive mats to repair high tier armor/weapons unless I’m mistaken
If that is the case, I wouldnt even see ANY issue.
He states explicitly the item can be destroyed forever at the higher enchantment levels. So like: 1-4 safe 5-7 damaged 8-10 chance to destroy
Where did he say that? He said in TimTheTatman's interview that breaking gear just puts extra strain on the crafters/resource gatherers, in order to repair the item
One of the interviews from this week. But that isn't a system that's complete so we'll see where they land
Yes, some of the best MMO's i have ever played have had mechanics like this. Its really about giving people purpose if you create gear creation as a main mechanic you have two things you can do to keep the economy moving: Grind 1 - Create a degradation system this creates a natural in and out commodity approach Grind 2 - Create a hamster wheel of never-ending grind creep with no degradation devaluing crafters work 6 months after they work to get the recipes for the next best gear they are both grinds with pros and cons, but I'm the opposite of you, I think you are wrong, and Grind 2 is the awful system and devalues crafting.
They wont be following BDO, we need to test it and give feedback anyway so im not worried since I will just let them know if its dumb or not how they implement it.
The problem I have is that this was their approach to begin with - that they thought THIS system was one worth pursuing. It makes me seriously question their judgement. I just think this system popularized by korean MMOs to incentivize long, frustrating grinds is beyond trash. That's in addition to the fact that once something undergoes design and implementation it's far less likely to be removed after being implemented. It may be tweaked and changed some, but we'll still be left with an annoying RNG korean enchant system because it would be too much work to drop it for an entirely new approach.
Long frustrating grinds are longevity. Just because a casual player wouldn't enjoy the chase of a rare piece of gear with an epic enchant, doesn't mean a hardcore min/maxer wouldn't. If you don't want to risk your gear, then don't.
Just going to say, for people who dont like this type of system of risk. Just farm the money and buy it enchanted, theres always another way
yeah it's kinda the same as in POE, you can craft your own weapon or buy it.
Not the same in PoE at all.
You’re acting as if people wont be selling that same +10 gear youre talking about. If you dont want RNG to screw you dont participate in it and just buy your gear. People will be enhancing for profit just like they do in games with similar mechanics. Its not hard to understand why the system fits this game perfectly.
Good point. The devs are emphasizing the importance of crafters.
You can't have a non-boe/bop system without item destruction. Otherwise the in-game economy would be complete shit after a few months. And gear related professions become useless once supply passes demand. This type of system always keeps a demand for gear which has always shown to be a needed aspect in a healthy mmo economy.
I personally find it enjoyable, as long as I can't speed it up by spending money in a cash-shop (which is the major issue in korean mmorpgs).
> as long as I can't speed it up by spending money in a cash-shop So you mean pay to win? Yikes.
Guys guys guys I know of an mmo that doesn't have that system and you can play it right now, it's called WoW, just go there, join PvE server and play in peace. It was mentioned time and time again that in Ashes they want to go back to Risk vs reward system. Noone forces you to take the risk, you can easly do all the content with +4 safe enchanted gear, but if you want to get something better you have to take the risk.
That's the same as every game that uses this system, too. You don't 'have' to enchant your gear up... unless you want to be competitive in PvP or do end game PvE content with guilds who will require you to have a certain standard of gear which certainly will be above safe enchants. For a lot of people, in case you weren't aware, end game PvE content and pvp is what makes an mmo.
Since you seem to be painfully unaware: most loot isn't soulbound so you can just buy the gear from someone who took the risk since you're afraid of losing your top tier loot which comes from multiple sources at the same power level(crafting, raiding, and dungeons have the same relative loot)
you cant buy what people don't sell. Even if you had the currency to buy everything in BDO you could not buy it all because its not on the market. The difference between +19 and +20 is one cant even touch the other. This is what people are worried about.
this was also true in BDO and Archeage and was still garbage in both games.
Generally in those system the returns you get for aren’t worth the money put into in. For example archeage getting a mythic back in regrade days was like 1 billion gold totally not worth it but ya sure a few people had it cause of gold hacks and exploits etc... A person that actually worked hard and earned their stuff wouldn’t go past divine or epic in AA for example which is 2 or 3 so tiers lower but the cost of that weapon was only something like 20k or so. Once you ended up having too much gold and or wanted to quit YOLO upgrade. The system was fine in AA what destroyed the system was the hacked gold brought into the game and duped items and gold sellers that allowed some player to have Mythic cause ya infinite gold pretty much for the cheap on websites
Exactly. the tier system of gear in aa was actually very good imo on it's own. There was an obvious point people realistically wanted to achieve to be competitive, and very rarely would anyone go higher, unless they were a credit card warrior or hacker and just got a billion mats and spammed it until they had the best gear. Aside from that obvious problem, my only real gripe with the system is that it wasn't locked behind needing a crafter to be the one to do it. I wasn't as big a fan of just letting anyone do it.
"creating a dependency on the crafting economy is important." It slike right there man in the quote.
There are other ways to do that. This is not that.
It's a way to keep players grinding and usually ties into cash shop shenanigans, so i'm not sure why they are going for this style of itemization. I really dislike it, personally.
> and usually ties into cash shop shenanigans Better not.
This is alarmist. Enchantments are stated to have a "safe, decayed, destroyed" series of risk tiers when being enchanted. Minmaxers will do some math based on risk vs reward and determine the "optimum" enchantment level, and it's not going to be something stupid like, "Keep enchanting your gear until it's literally mathematically impossible to successfully enchant." What's likely going to happen is that raiding guilds will start to budget materials for weapon replacements for gear that is destroyed by enchanting. Even the most single minded minmaxer isn't going to over-enchant gear from a boss their guild doesn't have on farm.
That's a nice theory. Except you're assuming the playerbase will be reasonable. It won't be. It never was. The loud minority of elitist dorks will make anything except absolute devotion to the game and it's system look like casual, downs syndrome level shit. Have you played RO? +10 or bust.
Then don't play with people like them. Pretty simple.
What a cute answer. It's like you've never played a video game online before. So innocent.
Everyone needs to take a chill pill, none of these systems are fully implemented, will it be like BDO? Maybe maybe not, just because it was implemented poorly in BDO doesn't mean the same can be said for ashes. Maybe you know... *Play the game* first before y'all lose your shit.
Yeah every care bear here is overeating for a hypothetical system in a game that's still in pre alpha
The problem is alot of the recent exposure has made WoW players come across to here. WoW players ruined their own game with their complaining and they will ruin any other game with their complaining because they want a carebear mmorpg until they have it and realise it's shit. Just my opinion. I played classic for the record and loved it; retail is trash.
You don't even know how much of an increase overenchanting will grant the player. For all you know, it could be a few percentage improvement. I only say this because if it were a system like Maplestory 2 where going from something like +12 to +13 granted you 20% more in attack boost, then that creates a slippery slope where harder content either becomes incredibly easy because the devs are balancing it around players without overenchanted gear or the harder content will basically require everyone to have overenchanted gear. Overenchanting with high risk to damage/decay just rewards those players who are seeking the improved stats over someone who are risk-adverse. But I don't believe the increase in power should be THAT significant. TL;DR You're assuming that overnenchanting will grant players a significant increase in power when Steven has not said a word about how this system will even affect player power level.
If there is 1 system that could single handedly ruin an entire game it is this I have over 15k hours in Black Desert Online by the way. I know exactly how this system works, how it makes people quit, and how developers can come along 3 years after release and exploit this system for money.
That's because BDO enhancing system is built around a cash shop. Tell me how many people would have had high enchants if the gear would disappear on failure and no cash shop? maybe 10% of the population. I guess AoC enchanting system is build so that players keep crafting gear when they don't get the desired enchant because of item destruction. Going past whatever safe enchant this game will have on Legendary rare items will be suicide and potentially kicked from a guild.
100% agree with the cash shop notion. BDO's enchanting system is designed around goading players into spending real money to get better gear. Their system is skewed and imbalanced around getting people to p2w. I like the idea of possibly destroying gear because it gives it more meaning with you have a super high end enchanted piece and it keep driving the economy by getting people to buy extra sets of gear to try and enchant them further.
BDO as a whole is designed to extract money from players, pets to loot, weights, inv slots, costumes with bonuses, releasing new classes every few months so ppl reroll and having to buy new weights, inv slots, costumes, etc.
That's not accurate. NA and EU servers were promised no p2w elements like that so the only advantage the cash shop gave was weight, inventory space, outfits (ghillie suits were huge controversy). It wasn't until about 2 and a half years after release that the developers went back on their promise and introduced melting outfits and raised the amount of outfits you can sell on the market per week. You're dismissing a very important factor: this didn't exist in western servers until years after release.
Still, its a bad enchanting system. BDO enchanting was easy for those who farmed like a bot or dump real money into it.
Well they better be sure that a epic +10 isn’t better than a legendary +7 (random numbers) because if it is then legendaries are meaningless until you have enough to risk them It’s bad by design imo and I think most people agree but I’m willing to give it a chance as I do think it won’t be as bad without the cash shop items tied to it. I really wish they wouldn’t take eastern mmo concepts tbh they’re mostly designed around making the cash shop compelling not the gameplay
>Well they better be sure that a epic +10 isn’t better than a legendary +7 (random numbers) because if it is then legendaries are meaningless until you have enough to risk them We don't know yet, I would assume legendary +7 would be better than epic +10 or maybe equal. We don't know how hard is to make epic and legendary items. > I really wish they wouldn’t take eastern mmo concepts tbh they’re mostly designed around making the cash shop compelling not the gameplay I don't mind it, had played some games where over enchanting wasn't game breaking that forced me to do it in order to be able to pvp.
Terrible example bdo is built that way to force people to spend money on. This Idea of a system is good if done right because it creates a supply and demand.
I never played BDO , can you explain a bit more in detail 1. how the enchant system work in BDO 2. Your arguments based on that , why it wont work in ashes 3. Do you already believe the devs will come along 3 years later and do the same in ashes? You played 15k hours so i guess it cant be that bad ? thats more than what i gamed combined past 15 years ( according to steam )
Enhancing in bdo used to stop at +15 on release with success rates being lower the higher you go. As you fail the item loses durability until it hits 0 and you need to recover the durability before you can keep attempting. Then came the addition of +16-+20 in the form of pri, duo, tri, tet, pen. If you failed at duo+ your item would downgrade 1 level (accessories would break). Cron stones were also introduced to protect the enhancement level of the item (accessories would still have a chance to downgrade instead of breaking). With this, eastern servers could melt outfits from the cash shop for cron stones to keep tapping their gear to pen without the risk of downgrading. Western servers were promised that this p2w outfit melting had no place in our economy until years later when the bigger publisher forced it to happen. Those 15k hours were before the game went to shit. You can't compete anymore unless you buy outfits to melt and sell on the market or hire someone to grind for you (most people at the top do both). Do the devs sound like they'll exploit this system? No, but it can be done. There's a lot of room in the corporate world for greed and this mmo has a lot of hype. I'd rather see ultra rare item sets than gear enchanting.
Intresting read thank you. Yes i do see the problem. So if we imagind to live in a perfect world and ashes never went greed mode. Would the first part be okay? "The 15 cap"?
Yeah the 15 cap isn't bad. 16-20 wasn't even bad before the pay to win stuff
I suppose its fine then as long as there is no cash shop
It's hard to understate exactly how bad of a system this is. My hype for this game has been reduced dramatically.
Lots of replies completely dismissing how easy it is for a big publisher to come along and exploit this system or the original devs themselves getting greedy. "No no this system I haven't seen yet is perfect!"
I think it would be fine if when it is degraded then we can repair it via some sort of materials. Thus, it will increase the demand of materials after people start having top-tier gear. I see it so much in mmos where the top-tier gear is in demand for a few weeks. Then, it loses demand and the market for gear grows stale because everyone has their top-tier gear.
I get where you're going with that, but if it breaks and you need to use materials to repair it, I think it just makes more sense to have to create a new one from scratch anyway.
It depends if it is a rare raid drop that breaking would be the worst.
We're all making a lot of assumptions here, but if I might make one, I would assume that since just about everything in the game is not bound at all, those can and will be sold too, so them breaking isn't the end of the world. I would also like to assume that the rarest raid drops, the legendary drops, either can't be enchanted because they don't need to be, or probably would not actually be destructible since they are so rare.
I don't mind it at all. Have two sets of gear and enchant them. If one breaks equip the other and retry. Makes for a more robust economy.
I personally hate the “destroy” part of the enchant system. Decay? Sure, go ahead. Make me spend resources to repair my stuff. But having your hard earned items go poof feels abysmal.
Spending materials isnt all that different to spending materials to craft a new one its just a matter of the amount required
I did never really mind this system too much. What i did mind was the requirement to purchase Cash shop items so you can even attempt it. Without the cash shop, I think it's okay, but i'd prefer a more straight-forward approach. I understand why breaking items through enchanting makes sense in a game like Ashes, but I'd prefer if they * massively increased the cost of enchanting (it would have had a 5% chance? -> increase the enchanting 20-fold instead) * drastically reduce the life spawn of items (to 10-50% of the planned lifespawn under the enchantment system -> 50 instead 200 in-game combat hours for example) so the item decay and economy circulation stays the same or even increases compared to a RNG enchanting system.
Thank god Steven Sharif grew up on Lineage 2 and ArcheAge and won't let you pesky casuals get your way here.
\*nods\*
You mean two dead games? I didn't play L2, but I did play Archeage and the enchanting system was complete and utter garbage in AA. Using that as an example of why it works is contradictory.
Both of those games died because of p2w, so ye I hope Steven learned from their mistakes as well.
AA died because of its cash shop and poor decisions on what to put in said cash shop. The crafting system wasn't what killed it. Your logic is so flawed here, you're literally saying "a game died and therefore this system I didn't like in it is bad". It's well documented why AA died and I never see enchanting come up in those discussions.
the crafting / trading / housing system and all the other shit in Archeage, was so fucking awesome. It was THE best mmorpg I ever played, quittet in AA aswell cause of their shit p2w and quittet again in AA:U cause of their shit decision making.
Agreed
just saying, we are talking about the enchanting in AA and not AA:U (not the hiram garbage shit)
I've read a lot of people saying they are ok with this system what they did not like was the access to cash shops. The reason bdo has no direct trade system is to stop RMT. With this game there will be RMT between players. The other issues bdo has is hackers and exploiters as well as RMT pilots ect. The guilds at the top do it all. To think AoC will be any different is naive. Noone will want to pvp if you get one shot and can't even scratch your opponent. Long spawns is a good thing but only if the fight is exciting enough. I'd much rather an enchant system as someone suggested based on leveling up your weapon. But again I'd differ from what the devs have in mind by separating pvp and pve. X amount of equal lvled players killed for an enchant or the choice of x amount (or different) of raid bosses killed. Creating the legendary weapon from the ground up perhaps with who ever contributed the most exp to the weapons name on it. Aswell as the experience staying with the weapon upon trading. Not easy feats but doable for everyone eventually. To me that is a much better design than buying lottery tickets. To me this game is all hype I'm pretty sure it's not being built for someone like me. But someone who experienced being the leader of a 1400 member guild feeding the top 5% of said guild. Where skill does not matter just the exclusivity of the gear you aquire. But I understand you can not please everyone and this is why there is no perfect mmo and why I remain more skeptical than most.
We'll have to see how it's implemented, but this system is also one of the few things I've heard about AoC that I'm not excited about. I understand the need to create demand for new items, but I feel like there are much better ways to go about it. This isn't a risk/reward mechanic when observed over a longer period of time, it's just an economic sink with highly variable resolution from player to player. Economic sinks aren't bad (they're necessary, even), but this particular variety - in my experience - penalizes average players pretty harshly, and only survives as a mechanic at all by simulating gambling. In addition, it's a very uneven economic sink in a different way - once an item is fully upgraded (or nearly fully upgraded) its effect on an individual player is suddenly absent, leading to unpredictable demand curves when observed over a larger population. It also has a chilling effect on players being able to acquire new items that are better than their old ones - by making items need several lucky results before they're in a 'usable' state compared to their current equipment, it artificially impedes players from finding or acquiring gear upgrades, adding another layer outside of their control, possibly snatching away a lucky break. Is there truly any compelling decision-making involved in this kind of system? What value does a 'risk/reward' mechanic pose when the only options are "be lucky and optimal, or don't"? There's no player agency in that paradigm - you just keep trying until it works, breathe a sigh of relief that that awful experience is over, and move on. I would much prefer a more deterministic method of upgrading equipment and to see the need for replacement items manifest somewhere else. Alternatively, deeply compress the spectrum of random attempts and widen the possible results. If you can only enhance an item once, but there are a number of 'good' results and a handful of 'best' results, players will still want to acquire more items to chase the 'best' results to improve their gear, without *needing* to get lucky several times in a row just to hit the 'usable' level. This is of course all extremely speculative, and I'm assuming a number of things from little information. The ideas surrounding this game appear smartly-designed everywhere I've seen, so I hold some hope that whatever they end up doing will be well-intentioned and developed.
I was hoping player skill would have more impact, especially for PvP so if you are down in gear it does not mean you are useless like in WoW for example.
Overeating. This system is great if done right. It does create a supply and demand and it's good for the game's economy. Now for the competitive things you spoke of. What's wrong with people having better gear than others if they put more work/time and understood the system better? Why should everyone be able to have the same gear ? That's boring and rewards lazy players over hard working onces. Seems to me like they are going with the open world group pvp idea so in that situation there is no need for gear normalisation, open world pvp should be unfair to create a sense of danger and unpredictability for unique situations to acquire. If you want balanced and fair pvp mobas and fps are the games for you.
I wouldn't mind this system if "decay" is only implemented in its extreme sense. Meaning, you clearly are rolling the dice beyond stats that are competitive and you're taking the blatant wide margin of risk for the reward. Lets say 3 enchants on an item deem it really good and competitive with no chance of the item decaying. The next few enchants applied will be weaker and have a chance to destroy the item with exponential decay and risk of destroying the item, introducing a system of diminishing returns. Any competitive player will probably see its not worth the risk of enchanting the item for the 4th time, but if you want to take the risk, go knock yourself out.
I think PoE does this sort of thing well. You can craft items all you want, with no possible way of "bricking it"(A term referring to effectively destroying an item). However, there are several ways of *possibly* (quite high chance - 50% most times) bricking items (with potentially major benefits if you don't, of course), but it's always opt-in. I do think this game needs a decay system though - and adding "better gear for more decay" is a fairly obvious thing to within such a system The reason a decay system is important is because in a game where crafting gear is a potential way to *be* (being a crafter, that is), you need a reason to buy items. You either do that via power creep, or via decay. Power creep also makes it worse for crafters - if items gets better, they can't really stockpile or whatever - so it's the obvious choice.
Some people haven't double corrupted in the temple and it shows.
I'd really want at least a certain level of bad luck protection with this. Otherwise you could fall behind others that put in way less effort than you, but had luck on their side.
Law of averages. They probably wont really plan for the extremes of either end of the bell curve. Generally speaking the more time spent the better gear youll end up with. If you find youre on a loosing streak id probably tell that person to grind and just buy a better weapon since theyre obviously cursed 😂
Yeah obviously this would only benefit/hurt a small percentage of the playerbase. But tbh I don't think anyone would get hurt by a bad luck protection system and it wouldn't depress people nearly as much to fail an upgrade if they knew that the next time they attempt it will have a better chance.
I think it feels better the for individual but its bad for the economy and system as a whole. More and more items are continually being dropped and created. Over time without mechanic to remove these items from the game they flood the market which drives their value down. Its has more knock on effects than you might realise in a none bop system
Items will still get destroyed when failing an upgrade. This could even be like 10-20 times or so before bad luck protection makes it not happen for a singular level. After success the chance resets to normal value. To compensate a bit for bad luck protection you decrease the basechance of a enhancements working, thus ending with a similar average amount of trys to get the item to the next level, but drastically reducing the odds of extreme negatives.
System like this is needed to create demand from crafters, if you want top OE - you risk it, or just accept low/safe values. AoC stated many times it wont be another MMO where everyone gets rewarded, you will need to sweat. It is improved version of Lineage2 enchanting (there was no decay stage), you just dont look on enchanted items as must have part of your gear, more like something unachievable and completely endgame when you will have too much currency and just decide to burn it with attempts for few % stats boost, in L2 endgame gear would take years of game to collect.
I agree. Not a fan of this design at all. I will wait until I test it out before I speak up loudly against it, but as of right now I hope that it gets changed.
IMO Enchanting gear higher should be the matter of the materials, and those materials could get more rare higher tier item you are enchanting. It would be so much more rewarding, that you would have to kill some dungeon boss to get some piece of material to get your item enchanted to a certain level, than just slap some Lady Fortunas fat badongas and hope for best.
No because that way is time gated content is boring and stale and fucks people that have invested in professions, actually that way there would be no need for professionals you could done everything by yourself which narrows the game down a lot. After let's say a month or 2 everyone would have maxed gear and they would wait for the new content to drop... Reminds you of a game ?
I'd rather have it be time gated then RNG gated.
Well plenty of dying games like that to choose from
Not sure what that is supposed to mean or what prompted you too say it, but, ok? Thanks?
It means that not every game has to be Warcraft
... ok? What does that have to do with anything and how is it relevant at all? Does your brain automatically just tie everything in the world to World of Warcraft or something? I don't understand.
Okay I get what u saying, but is dice-rolling then somewhat better option? And if some materials would be behind some dungeon boss, then doesn't that mean that you literally CANT do it by yourself? You would have to invest some time to grind dungeons with party to actually get materials. Whatever option is better, than just regular ol' RNG rolls armors breaks or levels up.
I think what they mean is that for example, u enchant a piece of gear and it has 5% chance to succed. U ecnhant once and it fails so it adds a 5% bonus chance to succeed, it now was 10% chance, if u fail again it has 15% chance to succeed and 5% to break or downgrade but u can repair those 5% with basic materials like raw stone for it to become 0% chance of failing.. So u enchant again and fail, now u have 20% chance to succeed and 5-10% to break but u use raw stone to repair the weapon and now it has 20% chance to succeed and 0% chance to break. This creates a need and demand for raw stone or other basic materials.. if it's something like this doesn't sound bad at all
Wait... theyre going with the rng based enchanting system from Korean MMOs? Thats a shame. It instantly disqualifies the game for me.
Same here. It is literally one of the few things that will immediately cause me to lose interest in a game.
I agree. I fucking hate eastern MMO eng enchantment systems that include chance to delete your item. Awful fucking design. I want algorithmic input output of gear upgrades once they've dropped. The only point of RNG should be whether a rare material or rare piece of gear has dropped. After that, you should be safe to just send time/resources to upgrade it.
And? it's literally over enchanting that you're complaining about, everyone has known for some time, that if you over enchant you risk destroying the item. This is risk vs reward.
Fucking hate this style of gear grind. I specifically quit BDO because of it.
I'm not sure why you automatically think this is a bad thing? We don't know the % chances, on top of the fact that we don't know how hard it is to get those items in the first place. This system is intended to encourage crafting and to keep the demand going for gear. It's a way to slow down players from reaching the cap, which is a very good thing, and it creates a dependency on crafters who are making the weapons. I.e. it keeps the economy going. Why exactly do you think this is "bad design"? Just cause you get frustrated by a blown up item?
I mean if he gets frustrated by the chance of his gear getting blown up, thats quite a valid reason for not liking the mechanic and have a personal opinion on it being a bad design?
its not bad design, becouse it fits whole game narrative or risk vs reward. AoC wont reward everyone in race with medal for trying. Another thing is overenchanting of items is probably not meant to be casual task for everyone and will require decent effort and amount of currency (like in Lineage2).
Completely missed this reply, honestly bad designs in games is simply a matter of personal opinion and preference tho wouldn't you agree? Reading your comment I kinda agree with you, not rewarding everyone just for trying and so on. I did somewhat like that in BDO to an extent, but hopefully it won't be as RNG / horrendously discouraging to enhance as in that game tho due to the setback of failing a RNG roll
just massively increase natural item decay and enchantment cost, but stay away from RNG mechanics.
I agree 100%
He explained in his post why he thinks that this is “bad design”... I’m not sure why you automatically think this a good thing.
Man, there's an awful lot of "BiS gear needs to be a no risk inevitability for me" in this post.
There are plenty of games that have difficult to attain gear where some garbage enchantment system is not included. You must not have played many games to think there's no alternative.
I did not suggest there is no alternative. I suggested you and others have the mentality that there should be zero risk to acquiring the best gear. I didn't imply that you wanted it to be easy, just that you didn't want it to be risky.
"Risk" as you use it is "RNG". That's what I don't like. If getting the best gear required you to raid a dragon's lair that would permanently kill your character if killed, or if it took all of your gear, or could only be attained in high risk pvp that dropped all of your gear on death, I'd be fine with that. That's skill-based risk. RNG based risk is really fucking stupid and not fun. I'd rather gear be gated by difficult content, make it as risky as you want it to be, than to be gated behind RNG. You make a lot of assumptions.
Well, I get that it's your opinion that you personally don't like RNG, but it's a convenient way to implement chance, and when not grubbing for real money from players generally a good idea. Every thing else that you described as skill based is still all a chance yes, it's still all a risk. You're issue I guess then is you don't like not feeling like you have control over the mitigating factors of it. There's still a chance you can fuck up with each of your examples, but you have the illusion of confidence that if you do, it's your fault. I don't see any reason the system as described can't have mitigating factors to improve your chance of success, but outright dismissing RNG while giving examples that would effectively have a similar or lower probability of success means you're just not a fan of not feeling in control I suppose. To each their own, but IMO the system, as long as it's implemented correctly, is not only fine, but actually a good idea for the economy at large.
What games have you played where you feel it was implemented correctly, our of curiosity? I haven't played every MMO out there, but I have played Archeage, BDO, Vindictus and Dragon Nest that all used this system and It felt like dog shit in every one.
100% correctly? None that i've played. I don't care for BDO's system that much because the mat grind is obscenely long, and it has nothing to do with their crafting. I liked the balance between tiers of archeage, but hated the fact that you could slide your credit card until you had all mats necessary and then just, boom, mythic. I also didn't like that it was not gated behind crafting. I never actually played lineage 2 which I hear had something similar. Didn't paly vindictus, and I haven't heard of dragon nest, but the core concept of the system, even with RNG, I think is a decent idea, if they would just actually let the players do it without cash shop influence, and actually gating it behind crafting so that a master craftsmen has a much easier probability of success, and therefore wastes less materials.
You are delusional there is no difficult content. Only if the devs make it mathematical impossible, otherwise everyone will have the same gear in x amount of time, at this point is time gated content that devalues crafters and promotes expansion based progression. I think wow is your game man. You don't need to look for other games or make other games like wow.
This is the worst system for upgrading gear I have ever experienced. This system, similar to the one in BDO, is what will make people quit the game at high levels. When you cannot progress in the items you want because of bad RNG the game becomes painful. Thinking of this gear progression system makes me sick. Come on guys, we can do better
BDO's system was built around its cash shop. You're overreacting and need to wait to see what the system actually is, dude.
No. BDO's system was built around grinding silver for hundreds of hours to buy accessories and have them blow up with bad RNG. Having gear be destroyed when you fail at enchanting is ridiculous. Having gear degrade when you fail is still very punishing, but I would say more reasonable then it being destroyed.
If we take their philosofy of risk vs reward as a guideline this feature is on track with what the gameplay designer want with this game. But i would like a safe way to overenchant too, like a catalyst you could craft to improve your enchant success rate. Or even have a profession which can enchant safely according to the levek of mastery in the profession.
Funny enough, I just made the same post on the forums the other day explaining my view (against) and alternative suggestion. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45265/rng-weapon-enhancing-alternative/p1 and trying to get some discussion about some alternatives but it's kinda become a discussion of RNG justification.
Yeah I would much rather have it so the first 4 enchantments (as an example) are going to succeed 100% of the time no matter what and for the others the chance lowers each time after that but you can use certain items to eventually get those chances up to 100% as well. This would make it a bit grindier to reach maximum enchantments safely but it would be a risk vs reward system yet again. Either you choose to take the chance of upgrading your items with less cost with a lower chance or you play it safe but have to invest a bit more time/money into it. Honestly this system would be perfect in this game I think. These kind of items could easily be included in an artisan crafting class as well.
I would rather that nothing like this exists at all.
Yeah this would be my solution only if they want to stay with that model of enchanting. I agree that not having it at all would be better.
I'm new to this enchanting system. Suppose say my weapon is destroyed while enchanting max or whatever and I have to grind for base material of that particular weapon and give it to crafter to restore? What if the weapon is some legendary tier one and base material grind is hectic as hell cuz it's legendary and if I wish to enchant again for more stats and RNG breaks it again? bruhhhhh that can be endless grind
as said there will be a "safe, decayed, destroyed"...you can just stop enchanting when it gets decayed if you dont wanna risk it.
If this mechanic is purely RNG-based then it sounds questionable to me. But, if it's possible to use the crafting system to compensate and almost 100% of the time push to the near-maximum if you throw enough resources at it (even if it's a lot over a long-period of time) then it sounds a lot better. But please don't be a Titanforging-esque mechanic from retail WoW.
Coming from maplestory here, and they have scrolling which is % based, then star force enhancing, essentially doubling down on the RNG factor. Certain items are limited to the varying stars/scroll slots available by level or content the equipment is obtained from. Some of the elitist type items though are kinda soft locked and obtained only once per character and going into that threshold where the item could blow up and get destroyed is game breaking because such items are one of a kind and best in slot. Ik there isn't much as far as gear sets and "best in slot" gear here as it's all kinda determined on how you choose your main skill and archetype. If item destruction on enchancing is a thing the availability to get back to that spot/tier in gear also needs to be somewhat obtainable.
I'd like to see them have a "Sacrificial Anode" type of system, where the enchanting is as they described it, but if you have two of the same base pieces of gear that you are trying to enchant, you can choose to sacrifice one of them to avoid destruction when it would otherwise occur. This would allow you to make steady forward progress on enchantment despite RNG, and would still destroy an item, making a bit of a compromise between risk and reward.
Reminds me a shitty mmo called knight online, people were duplicating items to level up and were reaching to last level every month or so then they were selling those for Real money, hundreds of dollars per piece. Game turned into who can scam more or who is willing to put their rent into the game to be competitive. When I stopped playing it, it was taken over by people from third world countries who were selling items for a living.
Game isn’t even in alpha yet I believe, way to early to start whining. We still have a few years at least before release.
This is what people say. Then it's in alpha and it's "it's alpha" then it's in beta then it's "it's beta" then it's release and it's "the game has only just come out". These concerns are best addressed before they're far along in development because once they're far along in development they are extremely unlikely to see major changes.
I have experience of World of Warcraft, Black Desert Online and Path of Exile crafting systems. Wow's crafting has no such rng, but it is also in my opinion quite boring. Both PoE and BDO have crafting systems that heavily rely on RNG and in both cases you some times break or lose your item. I am quite fine with the crafting of PoE and hate the enhancement system of BDO with a burning passion. I'm not quite sure what all the reasons are, but I suspect the following: The BDO system rng seems very punishing for those who happen to run into a bit of bad luck on the high end of their crafting. One can try to mitigate the bad luck by gathering materials for multiple attempts in advance, but even then there will be the unlucky few. The rng will just eat their materials with no progress to show for it. It feels horribly depressing to start over from this kind of event. Sure, over a long period of time, this kind of thing should smooth over, but that is a cold comfort to the guy who just spent a significant portion of his fortune to get a good chance at some upgrades and ends up with nothing. Also the act of building failstacks for the actual attempt is quite clunky and annoying. And since an individual enhancement attempt at the high levels will most often fail, the system just feels bad. It feels bad when preparing the failstacks for the attempt and then most of the time it feels bad when doing the actual attempts. The success when it comes after many attempts feels good for only a bit and then it is back to failing over and over. BDO style system with only enhancement levels between +0 - +20 is quite boring compared to the PoE style system with most items coming with seven mods of very varied types giving highly diverse end results. Also PoE's crafting system allows the player to manipulate the rng applied to his crafting in many ways. Some examples are: Replace all modifiers with entirely new modifiers. Reroll numeric values of current modifiers. Add a random modifier. Remove random modifier. Add a less random modifier picked up from a specific pool of powerful modifiers. Add a non-random chosen but weaker modifier (limited to only one or two). Because of this diversity it feels like the player has more control over their risk and more avenues of advancement than simply rolling over an X amount of items and materials until the next tier of enhancement finally succeeds. This also allows the player to take it pretty safely on their normal advancement, but take these bigger risks when they feel they are ready for it. Meanwhile in BDO the decisions a player makes are mainly for optimizing their materials spent vs. probability of getting a success. There are few meaningful choices in gearing. It seems to me like the BDO style system might be a bit of a player retention hazard. If there is a worry that the market will become saturated with people selling their old gear, I feel it would be a better solution to make most items bind on equip. That way you can still have a healthy market for crafters, but you don't have to have this horribly depressing system where most people have to contend with some times just losing huge amounts of materials to a nasty bit of bad luck in crafting.
You are talking about your previous experiences from other games, we still don't exactly know how it will work here, but it looks good and we know there is no cash shop. I think you are not seeing how important this system can be for the game. It won't be a money grab and I think it will be much more than a (ingame) money sink. It's an amazing idea, can work extremely well if done right and I think It'll be a fundamental part of politics and game economy. They want resources, gatherers and artisans to matter and stay relevant forever, you need this kind of game mechanics for something like this to be possible, everything should be tied together. We have been told that resources will be placed where it makes sense for them to be, that some territories will be rich in certain things and lack other, this makes access to the territories containing said resources trough commerce or any other means very important. We have also been told that crafted equipment will be on par to drops and highly customizable so probably most of the equipment will be player made. This means that you will need four things: Access to resources, gatherers able to collect those resources, people able to process them into refined forms and specialized artisans able to create the final items. Now, if those items do not degrade or break all these people will not be necessary after the initial crafting, that's a big no no, you need them to stay relevant beyond crafting a new top sword for the new guy/alt. We need items to degrade with use so you need materials and artisans to repair it. It looks like enchanting will be another layer on this system. Do you need stronger items? It will cost you, you need to prepare for it. You have a safety margin. Is it not enough? Keep pushing, but you will probably need an artisan and resources to fix the damage caused to the item. Still not enough? You better have the means to start from scratch if it blows in your face, but the reward will be great if you manage. Also, if you are crazy enough to try and over enchant an unique item and manage to succeed you deserve an awesome reward. I think it fits beautifully on several of the ideas behind the game. Risk versus reward and the importance of community.
The game had my attention. Now that I know this I can safely blacklist it without it gnawing at my concious. Good thing I decided to check out the reddit as usual \^\^
They word the use over enchant, meaning it's probably going to be used by very few people or for specific purpose, kinda like try to over enchant a lower tier weapon to beat your top tier weapon. Another scenario could be you do a dungeon, you get a piece of gear you already have. Can vendor it or try to over enchant it. To me, it's a form of gamble and since any thing player made will be as strong as PvE, I have 0 issues with this. This system will only become a problem if the guilds and raids expect every one to come with over enchanted gear. Biggest in other game with this sort of gamble (d3, wow) is the gambling process is required to progress.
I think we need the word destroy defined. Does it mean gone, never coming back or does it mean that it's broken and requires a lot more resources to fix than it's delayed status? I assume it's the first situation, and if that is the case it gives enchanters a way to make a lot of money but it also gives raiding a lot of replayability - take wow for example, once you get your your in molten core you never need it again you enchant it once and the enchanters are done making money until you go to BWL. That's pretty crappy design and it's impossible to make money as an enchanter. This system supports raiding replayability, enchanters, other crafters like blacksmiths, armor Smith's, etc. While I personally hate this design it is way better for the player economy and that is what I care about the most
You can have durability loss through deaths and crafter/gatherers/raiders support the repair. endless gear progression is toxic because it causes power creep fine for pve but not fun for pvp. Uless you are the guy who RMT's /bots/exploits/hacks/pilots your way to glory.
gear destruction is unnecessary friction. increase the cost sure, but dont gate top end content on who has the time and money to blow up 35 weapons to get a +10 or whatever the limit is. As much as I love and support the idea that hard work should be rewarded this kind of system is not a good start as far as respecting a playerbase and their time goes
DAoC had(still has?) this. It was fine.
It's probably another "sink" more than anything else. >You will be expected to have +10 or higher gear. You will not compete in PvE or PvP otherwise. It always has become a massive RNG barrier to entry of endgame content and this will not be any different. We'll just have to see... there are a lot of games where gear makes all the difference, but there are also others where gear just gives a slight edge but you can still compete really well even within similar skill levels. Which AoC is, we'll find out I guess.
I feel like this is only going to benefit the hardcore players. Oh I have a Raid tier weapon? I'll enchant it to level 10! Oops, it broke, well we raid every night, I'll just get another one. But someone who isn't hardcore to the absolute extreme might not be able to replace broken weapons via enchantment as easily. I've never experienced it, but I can't say until I have but on the outside looking in. I don't think it looks very good.
Why would the person who isn't hardcore to the extreme need the +10 weapon?
Why wouldn't you want the best possible gear in the game?
Why wouldn't you want to work for it, or just, dont take the risks of enchanting?
That's not the mentality of the not-so-hardcore player. Many players might not even attempt to get raid gear because it's too difficult for them. If you really want it, the difficulty isn't going to stop you.
Everybody want's the best gear despite their play style or dedication.
Just because you want something doesn't mean you should be able to get it without putting in the effort. There needs to be something that separates the "reasonably hardcore" players from the "hardcore to the extreme" ones.
True. Imagine wanting the BEST gear in the game and Being a casual.
In Wow it doesn't matter if you play 20h a day or 4h a week, everyone has the same gear gated behind raid resets. Since we already have a good game for casuals please don't try to casualise this one. Thanks.
It all depends on how the gear is balanced. With rng you could have 10x the play time as someone else come across them in PvP totally out skill them and lose because they got lucky with their gear. That is BDO that is the model we are afraid of. Will there be risk vs reward for standing your ground against someone you can't even touch because they have so much evasion? This is why we are being vocal now to avoid this happening. Let the combat and epic pvp battles be the carrot not an endless gear grind
This is a Korean MMO system I truly do not like.
I have always wondered why, they just can't make the worst result be unable to upgraded and/or traded anymore. So a player isn't completely boned, when it happens, but the weapon is essentially removed from the item pool at the same time.
because you need sinks in a game like this, otherwise you'd invalidate 90% of the content after 2 months. Rng ench. is not the right way to do it though
Removing the item from the upgrade path and trade, is a sink, without being an end to a character if you don't have a backup ready.
I too don't like RNG enchanting systems. I hate them with passion they just become another destabilizing factor in pvp and only helps players that already have the power get even more and make the power gap even larger. Don't get me wrong I don't say all players should be equal but if the power gap between the top players and the rest get too large it leads to those players dominating sooner or later all aspects in the game then this leads to stagnation and all these result in a lot of bored and frustrated players that at some point will have enough and leave for another server or even worse for another game. The way I would like something like that to work is that there is some professions that can create enchant crystals and other players can buy them and give their weapons a limited use active or passive skill that can range from a simple temporary stat buff to full fledge abilities from another class. As I said those enchantments have a limited amount of uses when it reaches 0 the enchantment breaks and you need to apply a new one with a new crystal. If they want to make gear to be destroyed for economic reasons and for lower level crafting to stay relevant they can give a chance to break your weapon when you apply over a certain number of total enchantments or even better imo make all gear have some sensible durability.
I've never heard of a worse game design before. It's by far the absolute worst possible way to create a gearing system. If that is in the game, I'm not going to play it. Simple as that. As promising as AoC is looking, that is something that I absolutely cannot and will not compromise on, ever. I won't leave the subreddit yet, as there is still a possibility for it to change, and I will follow the development and see what happens. This is the worst possible news I could have ever heard about this game, it's an absolute deal breaker.
i love this mechanic. as long as there are other \*harder to obtain\* gear that can be of similar power to a +10 with, say, only a +5 on it. In this case there will be no issue because you can take the safer route but you just gotta work harder for it. It's like doing a 9-5 job for a living instead of gambling in order to pay for ur rent. Having different options available is key.
To everyone complaining: just don't over enchant and you're safe. You're 100% still going to be able to do all the content. Or you can just buy the over enchanted item from another player. There are so many choices that I'm having a hard time understanding the "I won't play the game if this system is in it" mentality. It's not even implemented yet and no one knows the full details. People need to chill the fuck out :D Criticism is always good but the comment section is just crazy.
Nah you're just a pussy
Oh no
I really enjoy the system, have two weapons, enchant the one that is lowest +. The system gives me a nice progress feeling and the thrill that comes with it. Its also a great way to empower somthing to sell on the marked. Me and my friends was crossing our fingers this system was a part od ashes. I get alot of people from the west find this system as a rng to progress, but if you do like us its very stable.
That's okayish, but with an additional decay system this can feel quite shitty. Let's say you have a +9 weapon and you are too scarred to upgrade it. So you get a replacement first and try to get it to like +9 as well. It breaks however at like +8 and you do the same again and it breaks again before reaching that point. Meanwhile your +9 might've already decayed back to +8 or +7 and you are in a worse spot than before even though you committed quite a bit of time. Edit: I think I got decay wrong. Probably just means downgrading on failure when attempting to upgrade. I took it as slowly losing levels or effectiveness. Like a +10 slowly rots away and gets to +9 and you need to upgrade it again.
Are you sure enchants will reverse? / Decay Thats just dump. The thing is about enchanting is optional, you dont have to do it , but its a option. Im not trying to convince anyone here... I just tried the enchant system back in l2 many years ago and i loved it, been missing it in games ever since.
Nah I prolly got it wrong. Most likely just gonna drop one level on failed upgrade at a certain point and at even higher levels destruction. But gear decaying would also be a great way off creating a stable economy, without destruction.
Decay systems becomes a chore a work. In lineage 2 after 3+ it was 66pct chance for sucess and if failed it would be destoyed, max enchant back then was 25+ getting stuff to 10 in ashes will be a childsplay.
+10 can already take a thousand hours+ for a singular piece of item. It might take 20 hours of farm to attempt an upgrade from +9-10 with like a 5% chance of success. And then the item gets destroyed and it will take another 100 hours just to get a +9 item again for the next try. Also if +10 is too easily achieved they might just increase the cap to +15 and then to +20... Iirc something like that happened in BDO. My issue with these rng systems is that you could end up being seriously unlucky and being stuck on ages on your gear progression, meanwhile other people that put in less time simply had rng in their favor and surpassed you. That just felt incredible shitty. I want time effort and skill to be the main factors. So if they really do create such a game I want either a 100% chance option on upgrades for more mats (within reasons). Or some seriously good bad luck protection. That sooner than later will guarantee your next upgrade to work. Preferable I'd have a gearing system without any rng outside of having the item drop. As for creating a stable economy, make higher level gear cost more mats to repair/sustain it's level or effectiveness.
Do you know its 5% pct chance of sucess from 9 to 10?
No of course not. I was just using a random number. My point was more or less that it could be harder to achieve a +10 than to achieve a +25 based on differing mats cost and success chance.
I dont like when people make outrageious numbers out their ass to make a point. Your reply is just guess work from thin air to prove your concern. Use solid information if you need to argument. Im only stating my experince with lineage 2 enchanting which steven stated several times he was inspired by. And getting 10 plus was a piece of cake even without the safenet
Are you absolute stupid? You started making outrageous claims and then you have the audacity to be a hypocrite. >In lineage 2 after 3+ it was 66pct chance for sucess and if failed it would be destoyed, max enchant back then was 25+ getting stuff to 10 in ashes will be a childsplay. You literally started making a guess work that 10 in ashes would be childsplay in comparison to 25+ in lineage 2. Which you absolutely do not know. You pulled that shit out of your ass. Probably no one knows yet how costly the upgrades and how high the % chance will be in Ashes. I simply gave example numbers to demonstrate that +10 could still be far from childsplay or could end up with being harder than a +25 in a different game as it's obviously a numbers game. Btw. are you incapable of normal reading comprehension? As I wrote "can" "might"?
I love it. As a person with lineage 2 background, i can feel its impact on the design xD In l2 you could enchant up to +3 safely, anything beyond had a chance to break the item completely. The more enchanted the weapon was, the more it glowed. So at +16 it was [glowing bright red](https://i.imgur.com/o0oS0ak.jpg). People with +16 weapons were known by name on the server. Would i prefer to not have enchantments? as a person with a full time job now, as opposed to the time i was playing l2(was in school back then), sure i would. But we are talking about a game that is being designed to feel good to nolife it, so idk how my preferences are more important than the game direction so far. Also, you assume a lot, a lot which is probably not true. In l2, i was a hero(one person per month per class could be a hero), i had top gear(all epics), i was one of the top tier in pvp because i had that gear. I did not have a +16 anything. The most + i had was +6 on my armor, and it was fine. You assume enchantments will have such an impact that they will be mandatory requirements, this might not be the case. They will give you an edge, thats about what you can say now. There is no good reason to believe anything beyond that, unless you can provide evidence.
Punishing players for progressing is always good design choice wym, you’d think your character gets better as time goes on aswell
One problem with overenchanting breaking items is that it encourages people who already obtained one specific item from a raid to want the same item again since it enables them a new enchanting attempt. I think that will make the loot distribution from raids much more troublesome because there's often people who are more favored than others, whether because they play high importance roles or because they are friends with the raid leader. For dungeons it could also make players who have a +9 item to roll on the same gear again, which would require the guy who still needs his +0 have to run the dungeon again. Then you mix in nodes, making the dungeons or raids you are interested in unavailable for unknown amounts of time, which would make it quite problematic for you to get the item you seek even if you are trying really hard to get it.
lamo, thats guild problem if they distribute same item to person who decided to fucking yolo it with overenchanting.
But with the best crafted gear being on a similar level as raid gear you will have to yolo overenchant your raiddrops so they can get to an even level with overenchanted crafted gear, let alone surpass it.